Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The sounds of Jupiter

A friend of mine pointed my attention towards an unlikely source of music. The planet Jupiter. Allegedly the NASA Voyager once picked up: "The complex interactions of charged electromagnetic particles from the solar wind , planetary magnetosphere etc. create vibration "soundscapes". The result below is a kind of ambient induced sweep of sounds which alters slowly. And I love ambient.

Here is a track from the 1990 album Space Sounds released by Brain/Mind research.

I sincerely doubt that this track is a unedited and raw recordning. But after reading a little from the people of NASA themselves, it seems that this is not fiction anymore. Leaving science. It has been done officially and NASA has some clips of sounds to listen to.

This of course could provide a fascinating backdrop for those who want to seek insperation from other sources then the usual. Maybe especially for those who are into sci fi and space exploration. Many ambient musicians have a keen interest in field recordings of natural sound, which they use in their music. I too own an old minidisc and a sony stereo microphone to record sounds. But most of us admittedly stay on the earth.

Artist Proton Kinoun did not use any audible material from any space exploration program to create his vivid and stunning album Apeiron. But the inspiraration is similar. With a rich imagination and the images of the Hubble Space Telescope he created one of the most beautiful free ambient albums that I have had the privileige to listen to. The netlabel Omnisphere recommends complete darkness and the use of headphones when listening to it. I can only agree.

I am Here

You can find me elswhere, Facebook is practical (click image)

Now I listen to

Lubomyr Melnyk - Corollaries (2013)

The ukrainian pianist's collaboration with Nils Frahm and other avant-garde neo-classical pianists has been good for all parties. The short album Corollaries takes the seminal exploration of new sounds in his inmimicable style back to a more simple idea, of writing a set of songs that are as simple as they are beautiful. Absolutely essential!